But, man, the fitful birth of Time and Change,
Demands the substance of a living love:
Nor, ever satisfied, must onward range,
And builds for earth the idea, or above:
His heart must find a home, where’er it goes;
He nestles in the warmth, then dreams ’tis cold;
Each imperfection lives, and livelier shows;
Love learns despair, and, at the last, is cold:
And, but one path, secure, leads ever round,
Nor dares attempt the warmth, for which it glows;
And who would trifle in this shallow sound
Escapes the test, fenced round by summer snows.
Whose quiet peace can amble o’er this road,
Lives, like what sage? nor fears love’s ardent goad.
LXXXIX.
I lately dreamt of an ideal form;
I thought to shape the mould after my mind;
I bore it through the crowd, and thought it warm;
I saw the shape, that struck my fancy blind:
Fool! whose presumption struggles to create
A beauty other than high nature uses;
Reckon thy function at a lowlier rate,
Raise thy poor pride to what herself infuses:
Then, if the glow of Nature’s life-blood thrill thee,
Then, draw the vision to a finer strain;
Then, purify, exalt, let beauty fill thee;
Imagination works not, then, in vain.
If here is aught, ’tis fashioned all from thee,
Lord of my love and of my minstrelsy.
XC.
How large a margin yawns ’twixt thought and fact!
Rich Expectation robs the beggar Deed,
An unwise spendthrift, all his fortune’s sackt
To build the storehouse whence he ne’er can feed:
For, Hope devours her progeny in the womb;
Glutted with meat, she thinks she shall not starve;
She lies, she chews the cud, sleeps by the tomb,
Accustomed to past gorging, wakes to carve;
Poor idiot, all her rapture’s drunk away,
The sediment’s tasteless, save of craving thirst;
Her hydra debts seem lost in what they pay,
She cannot feed, till they’re discharged first.
I only know one hope, that ne’er deceives,
What’s stay’d on thee buoys less than it relieves.
XCI.
The proud long hours amble at tedious rate,
For that they know they bear the weight of thee,
Even the tripping minutes borrow state,
And, oft return, playing bo-peep with me;
Their cunning thinks to lengthen out my pain,
Or, woo weak prescience, with some fearful mine;
They ne’er suspect how joy shall, in this strain,
Usurp a minute’s woe, in every line:
To draw thy lineaments, the painter’s pride,
The marble’s glory, thy limbs’ mobile grace,
’Tis mine, to celebrate thy virtuous side,
How firm consistent, in such temple’s space.
To express its all would tire, though charm the time,
Some part befits the occasion, and my rhyme.